As 2015 draws to a close, I feel the need to look back and reflect upon the year. I’ve had some great adventures and lots of good memories.
2015 in 12 Photos
Category: food
Singapore Street Food
A week in Singapore is hardly enough time to sample all the delicious food that you can find throughout the city. There’s everything from simple chicken and rice cooked up at cramped little stalls in the bowels of Chinatown to sophisticated fare served at the classiest of fine restaurants. The one thing you’ll find in common among the wide variety of influences (Malaysian, Indian, Thai, Chinese, and Portuguese to name just a few) is that it’s all really good food. Singaporeans know their food and they don’t tolerate anything that isn’t up to par. Bad places go out of business and a sure way to get a good meal is simply to join in any long line of people you happen to see waiting for dinner. Here’s a taste of a few of the dishes I had the opportunity to sample over my short stay in this exceptionally appetizing country.
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England’s Coast-to-Coast Trail
Having recently taken part in the TGO Challenge, a walk across the Scottish highlands from the west coast to the North Sea, I got to reminiscing about another great coast-to-coast walk.
Back in the summer of 2012, Michael and I walked Wainwright’s coast-to-coast trail in northern England. It goes right from one side of the country to the other – from the North Sea, across 300 km of mountains, moors, and classic English countryside to the cliffs of the Irish sea. Here’s my journal and some photos from our adventure…
Usually, people walk the trail from west to east and stay in B&Bs along the route but we chose to go in reverse and to camp as much as we could. This let us save what we felt was the most beautiful (and difficult!) part for last.
Walking across Scotland – the TGO Challenge (part 4)
This is Part-4 of a trip report from my very first TGO Challenge, a walk across the Scottish Highlands. If you missed the first parts, you can find them here:
Planning for the TGO
Part-1: Torridon to Orrin River
Part-2: Orrin River to Loch Ness
Part-3: Loch Ness to Braemar
Day 10 – A Challenge Party
Braemar to Lochcallater Lodge
12:30-14:30 (2 hours), 9 km
I left Braemar after enjoying a tasty breakfast at Gordon’s Tearoom. Nothing like bacon and black pudding to fuel a day’s walk. Two hours later I arrived at Lochcallater Lodge. A few other Challengers had already set up tents just outside and more were inside enjoying hot tea. I was really excited to be at Lochcallater, perhaps one of the most prominent landmarks in TGO Challenge history. Every year Challengers gather here to celebrate, sing songs, and eat and drink late into the night.
The atmosphere was wonderful. Seeing so many friends re-unite after a year apart was touching. And how can you not be in a good mood when you’re in a warm cozy room full of like-minded walkers as cold rain falls outside?
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Walking across Scotland – the TGO Challenge (part 3)
This is Part-3 of a trip report from my very first TGO Challenge, a walk across the Scottish Highlands. If you missed the first parts, you can find them here:
Planning for the TGO
Part-1: Torridon to Orrin River
Part-2: Orrin River to Loch Ness
Day 5 – Crossing the Monadhliath
Ault-na-Goire to River Findhorn
09:50-17:20 (7.5 hours), 26 km
It was hard to say goodbye to Ault na Goire and the warm hospitality of Janet and Alec Sutherland. After a very filling breakfast I took my tent down and set off toward the Monadhliath Mountains. Not so much mountains as long, rolling hills, this was perhaps the area that I was most excited to see and also most anxious to get across. In bad weather with rain and fog, navigating through these indistinguishable hills can be notoriously difficult. But what I really wanted to see was the impact of rapidly expanding wind turbine developments. Wind power is a controversial topic in Scotland. In most places it’s thought of as a clean form of power. But in the Monadhliath you can see first-hand how it’s rapidly changing the face of the landscape. Construction and access roads criss-cross the land and heavy machinery thunders by. What’s left of this wilderness is fast disappearing.
About as soon as I could I left the wind turbine roads and started walking across the boggy, wet moor. At times I had to make large diversions to avoid steep muddy drops into ravines. I counted at least a dozen stream crossings on the ascent, each feeling colder than the last, as I approached freshly melting snow. Yet, it felt good to walk through wilderness, away from the roads and to follow the tracks of deer and rabbit. While it did rain off and on, there was little fog and I found the navigation within my capabilities. In heavy fog it would be quite the challenge!
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Walking across Scotland – the TGO Challenge (part 2)
This is Part-2 of a trip report from my very first TGO Challenge, a walk across the Scottish Highlands. If you missed the first part, you can find it here:
Planning for the TGO
Part-1: Torridon to Orrin River
Day 3 – The Weather Turns
Orrin River to Kiltarlity
07:15-19:15 (12 hours), 33 km
The first two days of my walk across Scotland were sunny, warm, calm, and really just perfect. It was hard to believe I was actually walking in a place renowned for its heavy rains and violent winds. When I woke up on the third morning of my journey, Scotland decided to give me a taste of the weather it’s famous for.
Rain, mist, wind, more rain. This change in the weather coincided with my first true track-less walking of the trip. As I followed the Orrin River downstream to the Orrin Reservoir, I enjoyed taking out the map and practising my navigation skills. The Scottish Highlands are a great place to sharpen your navigation capabilities. Features such as hills are often rounded without distinct points, making them difficult to distinguish from one another. Often, the best way to navigate is to follow waterways (burns, creeks, rivers, etc.) up over the hills then connect with a new waterway to find your way down the other side.
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Walking across Scotland – the TGO Challenge
I love long walks, especially when they take you right across a country from one coast or border to another. That’s the idea behind the TGO Challenge. Design your own route starting on the west coast and finishing at the North Sea, get advice from experienced Scottish hill walkers, and start walking. This isn’t my first country-crossing journey on foot but it is my first time hiking in Scotland and I was very grateful for the wise advice on such things as where to find beautiful camp spots and where I might want to avoid wind-farm construction.
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Scotland’s TGO Challenge
In just a few days I’m heading to Scotland to participate in an annual event where some 300 challengers attempt to cross the country on foot, each following a route they’ve designed themselves.
Each year The Great Outdoors Challenge is hosted by The Great Outdoors Magazine. It is a challenge, rather than a race. The goal for each participant is to walk from the west coast to the east coast across northern Scotland on foot in two weeks. No motorized transport is allowed, with the exception of taking a ferry across large lakes such as the famous Loch Ness. What makes this event especially interesting is that there’s no one defined route. There are many possible starting and ending points and you can choose any combination of trails, jeep tracks, forested glens, boggy moors, and remote highlands that you like.
Scotland is notorious for cold, wet weather, especially in May. This year is shaping up to be quite a challenging one with heavy snow still falling and steep icy snowfields remaining on the high peaks. At the moment, the forecast for Lochnagar, one of the high points on my route, is “snow turning to rain” with “severe gales”.
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From Sunday Roast to Lasagne di Spinaci in 3 Easy Steps
It’s an age-old question. How do you get to enjoy hearty meat pie, creamy gruyère fondue, and crisp lemon gelato all in the course of a few short weeks? That’s what we set out to discover as we travel from Oxford to Zurich then twist through the Alps into the Lakes District of Italy. Here are some of the culinary treasures we uncover.
It’s hard to beat a breakfast bap stuffed with bacon. Crunchy bread loaded with crispy, salty bacon. Continue reading “From Sunday Roast to Lasagne di Spinaci in 3 Easy Steps”
